


Alive Again

by Guanin



Category: Broadchurch, Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Gen, Miracles, Near Death Experience, Season/Series 02, Set during ep 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 10:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20338696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guanin/pseuds/Guanin
Summary: Atop the hill, Hardy collapsed, his heart finally giving out.Something flapped to his right. He’d think they were bird wings, but no bird was that big. Brilliant light flooded his vision. He squinted, peering at a hallucination. For what else could it be? A man, enormous white wings folding at his back, surrounded by the most breathtaking luminescence couldn’t be anything else





	Alive Again

Hardy never made it to Jocelyn’s house. His heart, tired and battered as it was, couldn’t make it that far. The medication he had hastily swallowed after plummeting to the ground outside his own residence didn’t have the strength anymore to fight back the tide of his weakened body. His vision began to blur halfway up the hilly route, legs faltering, a pain so acute that it clenched his eyes shut piercing through his chest. He panted, grasping the flesh above his heart, gritting his teeth. 

Just a little further. A few more hours. That’s all he needed to settle his estate, all going to Daisy. Couldn’t he have at least that?

A cold wind barreled up the hill, shoving him to his knees on the long grass. Dry stalks pricked his palms, which were no more than hazy blurs in his vision. 

_Have to get up._

_Have to get up._

_Up._

He collapsed. Ocean waves crashed against the shore down below, rushing toward the land in a frenzy before dissipating back the way they came. Like his life, ebbing away into the dirt that all beings must return to. He blinked up at the bright glare of the clouds overhead, little more than grey in his shrinking vision. It was so hard to breathe.

So hard. 

He should have said a proper good-bye to Miller. Popped his head in the doorway, at least. Would this be how she next saw him? A lifeless corpse abandoned on a mound that might as well be his own grave? 

“Sorry, Miller,” he murmured, his words so soft that they were snatched by the wind before he could hear them.

The Sandbrook case was all hers now. A hell of an inheritance to leave someone. 

Something flapped to his right. He’d think they were bird wings, but no bird was that big. He tried to turn his head, raise his arms to defend himself if need be, but he was too far gone for such things. Brilliant light flooded his vision. He squinted, peering at a hallucination. For what else could it be? A man, enormous white wings folding at his back, surrounded by the most breathtaking luminescence couldn’t be anything else. Had Hardy been religious, he would have called it an angel, but there were no such beings. 

“It’s alright,” the illusion said, regarding him with kind eyes as blue as the sky on a sunny day. 

It touched Hardy’s shoulder and smiled. What little breath struggled in Hardy’s lungs abandoned him as tears stung his eyes. This being was so beautiful. So loving. Peace filled his spirit, the like of which he had never thought possible. Was this what dying was like? Had he been wrong to be skeptical of religion all along? 

The being pressed his hand over Hardy’s heart. Hardy gasped, chest seizing outward as his lungs filled with air, the agony in his heart vanishing in an instant. His eyes shut and he knew nothing else. 

`````````````

A soft breeze brushed Hardy’s hair across his forehead as he opened his eyes. Consciousness returned like a soothing balm, not the despairing gloom that it had been since he’d been pulled under in that stream’s undertow, striving against despair to reach Pippa Gillespie’s corpse. A feeling of wellbeing enveloped his soul, a warm, fuzzy blanket ironing out his harsh edges. The light had dimmed in the sky, the sun much lower in the horizon than when he’d last seen it. 

“You’re feeling much better, I take it?” said a voice to his right. 

At any other moment, Hardy would have been on high alert, instantly on his feet, asking the man sitting beside him who he was and what were his intentions with him. 

Yet Hardy did none of those things. Some instinct told him that the man wasn’t a threat. But how could he possibly know that? How many monsters had he encountered with equally kind seeming faces and concerned gazes? Yet his soul insisted that all was well.

His soul? Sure, he had almost died, but was he really about to be religious now? The hallucination had just been that. A figment of his imagination. He’d never experienced one while having a heart attack, but that didn’t mean anything. It had been this same man. He wore a cream-colored coat with an immensely worn waistcoat and a pale, blue shirt. Cream trousers, too. That, along with the man’s pale skin and white-blonde hair, must have confused Hardy’s mind enough to make it seem like he was surrounded by light. The wings, too. A dying mind was prone to all sorts of fancies. 

Yet he hadn’t died. He was here, alive. This was Broadchurch, not some afterlife. If there really was an afterlife, he didn’t think that he had earned something as cruel as to remain here for the rest of his existence. Yet he felt fine. Better than fine. He felt like he could spring up and run a mile without breaking a sweat. All the pain was gone. His mood was cheerful. That never happened anymore. What the hell had happened to him?

“Did you see me fall?” Hardy asked the man, who really should be weirding him out, but wasn’t.

“I did.” 

The man spoke with a refined English accent that gave the sense of going back in time. Like his clothes, which looked like they’d come from a Victorian novelty shop. 

“I was walking along the coast,” the man continued. “It’s so beautiful here. I really should come by more often. I got an urge to hike up the hills a bit. That’s when I saw you. I was a bit too late to catch you, but not entirely too late, thankfully.”

The man smiled like he was immensely glad that Hardy had survived, despite never having met him before. 

“Are you feeling better?” the man asked. 

Hardy nodded.

“I feel fine,” he said, amazed. “I thought I was…” He licked his bottom lip. “Never mind. Yes, I’m great. Have you been sitting with me the entire time?”

Hardy checked his watch. Over two hours had gone by. That couldn’t be right. Who would sit next to a stranger for two hours, especially one who was clearly having some sort of attack?

“Did you call an ambulance?” Hardy asked. 

A coy expression slipped into the man’s eyes.

“There was no need,” he said. 

A troubled frown wrinkled Hardy’s brow.

“No need? A man was having a heart attack in front of you. Why wouldn’t you…”

Hardy blinked. His train of thought had drifted off. 

What had he been saying?

“Everything will be alright, Alec,” the man said. 

Hardy turned to him, peering at him like he’d never seen him before. The man’s smile was as bright and welcoming as the sight of the sun on a bleak, winter day. 

“Everyone will get their just deserts,” the man continued. “You will be happy again. You really should take a closer look at this place. It isn’t as barren as you think.” 

The man cast his gaze over the ocean below where the sun dipped through the pink-hued clouds, painting the horizon in radiant splashes of color. Tears pricked Hardy’s eyes. He didn’t know why. A year of life seemed to have crashed into him all at once in the span of a few seconds. He felt as much as saw the man stand up.

“I should be getting back now,” the man said, as nonchalant as if he had been out for a night at the pub. “Good luck on all your future endeavors.”

Hardy watched him walk down the hill. He should get up. Follow him. Question him more. Yet it didn’t feel like the thing to do somehow. Something kept him cleaved to the earth until that white-blond head and unusual coat disappeared from view. 

Hardy frowned back at the sunset. It really was beautiful here. Odd that he hadn’t noticed before. 

He made his way back to his house. The urgency of writing his will had vanished. It could wait. He wouldn’t be going anywhere any time soon. Ellie didn’t ask him where he’d gone, too absorbed in the case to notice anything outside of it. Hardy sat outside in the same chair as before, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together, a new vitality energizing his limbs. He gazed at the water, fascinated by the winding eddies sparkling with electric lights. 

````````````````````

The next day, he got a medical checkup. A full battery of tests to make sure that he was ready to finally get the operation. A weird, nonsensical voice in the back of his head nagged at him that needing a pacemaker was a thing of the past, but how could that be when he’d had two heart attacks only yesterday? He wasn’t even sure that meeting that mysterious man had actually happened. It could all have been the delusion of a stressed mind. 

Yet that probability shrank into unlikeliness when the doctor proclaimed that he was perfectly healthy. His arrhythmia had evaporated as if it had never existed. 

“That’s not possible,” Hardy protested, fearing that he was the victim of a tactless joke, but the doctor looked as confounded as he was.

“It shouldn’t be, no,” she said, frowning at the test results and reading them again. “We ran the tests three times just to be absolutely sure, and there is no mistake. Your heart also sounds great.” 

She had already listened to his heartbeat with a stethoscope, her repositioning increasingly frantic and confused as she moved from his chest to his back.

“I’m afraid I have no explanation for it,” she continued, finally setting the papers down and regarding him with awe. “You are as healthy as you can possibly be.”

Neither of them said it, but a word hovered in the air between them, an idea that was too preposterous to consider if Hardy weren’t gaping at the impossible. 

Miracle. 

Could it be? 

But that wasn’t possible!

Just like being suddenly cured of a lethal heart condition was impossible. 

That man. He had said that everything would be alright. Hadn’t done anything to get him medical aid. Hadn’t Hardy asked him about that? 

Yes, he had. His mind had gone fuzzy then, losing track. Almost as if something redirected his attention. Or someone. 

Wings of pure light. A warm smile that banished all his woes. A feeling of wellbeing the like of which he hadn’t felt since he’d first held Daisy in his arms. 

“How did it go?” Miller asked him that afternoon, concerned gaze silently wondering if he had finally agreed to get the operation. 

Hardy frowned at her, at a loss for words. It was mad. If he told her that he’d seen an angel, she would think that he’d lost his sanity. 

“I’m fine,” he said, considering letting it rest at that.

“No you’re not,” Miller said. “You’re never fine. And you have this really weird look in your face. What did the doctor tell you?”

She wouldn’t let this go. She never did, and why wouldn’t he tell her the truth when there were medical tests to back it up?

“That I’m fine,” he repeated. “I’m great. There’s nothing wrong with my heart. They ran the tests three times and there’s nothing.”

Hardy sank into the nearest chair, too bewildered to stand anymore. 

“I’m sorry, what?” Miller asked, pulling up a chair in front of him. “That’s not possible.”

“That’s what I said. It’s what the doctor said before she had the lab run the tests again. But it’s true. Look.” Hardy pulled out the sheaf of papers that the doctor had given him outlining his test results and handed it to Miller. “It’s right there. Clean bill of health. And nothing hurts. I feel fantastic. And happy, like I haven’t felt in ages.”

Despite the confusion swirling in his mind, a smile brightened Hardy’s face. Miller’s frown deepened, alarmed.

“That’s even weirder than your arrhythmia being miraculously cured,” she said, an attempt at a joke, yet her tone was more befuddled than amused. 

Hardy licked his lips. Miraculous. Miller would think him mad if he told her what had transpired a few days ago, even with those test results in front of her. Yet he couldn’t hold himself back. His secretive nature usually overrode any human impulse to share, but he and Miller had been through too much together for him to be able to keep it at bay.

“You know I don’t believe in miracles or angels or any of that stuff, right?” he asked, fingers twining on his lap, elbows pressed to his knees.

Miller rolled her eyes.

“It’s only a figure of speech. I didn’t say that that’s what actually happened, even though this really is… This is the sort of thing that happens in films, not reality.”

“That’s not what I meant. I…” Hardy’s mouth went dry. “You know I’m a rational man. I threw that computer tech out on his ear when he started going on about Danny talking to him beyond the grave. But something happened that day while you were holed up in here studying the Sandbrook case. When I left.” 

Hardy rubbed his forehead, uncertainty and wonder warring inside him, yet underneath it all he felt so calm, so sure that it had been no fantasy. Miller put the papers down, leaning forward with concern.

“What happened?” she asked. 

“First of all, before you start yelling at me, remember, I’m completely healthy now.”

Hardy told her. About the heart attack. The mysterious man. The brilliant vision of an angel coming to his rescue. The wonderful feeling of peace that had come after. She reprimanded him for walking off after being sprawled on the ground with his heart aching in his chest, but her anger soon turned to confusion, uncertainty, and skepticism.

“It must have been a hallucination,” Miller said, although not even she sounded certain. “Angels aren’t actually real, are they? I mean, I know we all went to church when Danny was killed, but…” Her brows furrowed further, regarding him with a lost expression. “Can they be?”

Hardy met her eyes with an equally disconcerted expression.

“A few days ago, I would have said that it wasn’t bloody likely, but now I think I’m leaning towards saying yes. If I had just seen him and that’s it, no feeling great or my heart condition suddenly cured, I would think I’d imagined it all, but I can’t explain this. The doctor couldn’t, either. I could go in for a second opinion, but what are they going to say if there’s nothing to find? I feel great. Since this started, there hasn’t been a single day when I didn’t feel pain or dizzy. Not one. It doesn’t make any sense. This can’t be some psychological, power of the mind crap.”

“An angel curing you is just as fanciful.”

Hardy dropped his head in his hands.

“I know. I can’t believe that I’m actually contemplating it, but somehow it’s the only explanation I can think of.”

Miller sank back in her seat, her arms crossed over her chest, and looked out the window with a perplexed intensity, as if the outside world would somehow furnish all the answers. Her lips worked soundlessly for a moment.

“I’ve never been the religious type,” she said. “I didn’t grow up going to church or anything. But I have always thought—believed might be the better word—that there is something out there. Maybe not the God that the church preaches about, but something. I’ve never thought that there is a way to know for sure.”

Hardy leaned back in his seat. He rested his right hand on the table, gripping it for support in sudden weariness.

“I guess I might know for sure now,” he said, looking out at the cloudy sky and seeing the memory of pale wings.

Miller gazed at him, pensive.

“Whenever I’ve heard stories of people seeing angels or the Virgin Mary, I tended to lean towards them hallucinating or making it up. Sometimes I’ve wondered if they really saw something. Coming from you, if it weren’t for these test results, I think I would wonder, too, but not quite believe you. But both of these things? Your suddenly healthy state certainly isn’t a fabrication. And I don’t believe that you could will yourself to be healthy, either. If that were the case, you would have done it ages ago.”

Hardy huffed in dry amusement.

“If only I could have. So you believe me, then?”

A tired sign dragged out of Miller’s throat as she leaned her head on her hand, elbow pressed against the table.

“I don’t have much choice, do I?”

`````````````

Hardy searched for the mystery man. There were no records of him staying in any of the hotels in the area, nor did anyone recognize a strange Englishman with a penchant for Victorian clothes. He was a ghost, an easy candidate for a figment of Hardy’s feverish imagination, yet his continued good health proved otherwise. Not once did he feel so much as a twinge from his heart. No dizziness. No short breath. His right knee, which had been achy since he turned thirty, was unusually pain-free. He didn’t get so much as a headache or spring allergies. 

Then there was everything else in his life. Joe Miller, after an excruciating trial where every piece of evidence and testimony was twisted and mangled by his defense attorney, making them fear that he really might get off, was convicted. The Sandbrook case was wrapped up the same day, those two murdered girls finally receiving justice. Daisy answered her phone when he called and didn’t sound like she couldn’t wait to hang up the entire time. Miller, Ellie Miller, that is, was slowly recovering from having her life ripped apart by her vile ex-husband. It seemed that the blessing that Hardy had received, if so it had been, extended to her, too. Hardy left Broadchurch for a bit. Spent some time with Daisy up in Sandbrook. Not only did she not avoid his company, but she agreed to live with him for a while to make up for lost time. Hardy considered trying to rekindle his marriage, but he sensed that it wouldn’t do either of them any good. Letting the matter rest, he returned to Broadchurch to his old DI position alongside the restored DS Miller. With his heart in tiptop shape, the police force had no grounds to keep him out. 

A few months into his new life, a life that he hadn’t expected to have, he returned to the hill where he met the angel. He told himself and Miller that he couldn’t be completely certain of what he’d experienced, but that was a lie. Ignoring evidence just because it was inconvenient wasn’t in his nature. He truly had seen something that day. Spoken to it. Been healed by it. The cold wind beat his hair around his head as he stood atop the hill, the grey storm clouds on the horizon a far cry from the dappled sunlight of that day. He breathed in the spot where he had almost died, feeling the warmth of a soft smile and radiant light.


End file.
